These narratives show that the Hebrews derived the origin of their nation from the land of the Euphrates and Tigris. We remarked above that the legend of the Deluge could only have arisen in river valleys, exposed to severe inundations ([p. 245]). If we set aside the additions made in the prophetic revision, the narrative of the flood belongs to the first text; in this text therefore the nations of the earth were derived from the sons of Noah. The revision adds that the descendants of Noah, in their journey from the East, found a plain in the land of Shinar, i.e. Babylonia, and dwelt there, and erected a city and a tower, intended to reach to heaven. Then Jehovah confounded their language and scattered them over the earth.[580] But it is the first text which gives the genealogy of Abraham, according to which the descendant of Noah, Terah, the father of Abraham, dwells in the land of his nativity, at Ur in Chaldæa. We found that Ur lay on the lower Euphrates, where the ruins of Mugheir mark its site, that the oldest buildings in Babylonia belong to this place, and the oldest sovereigns on the Euphrates called themselves kings of Ur ([p. 259]). From Ur Terah, according to the first text, journeyed with his family to Haran.[581] Haran lies in a wide plain surrounded by hills on the Skirtos, a tributary of the Belik, at no great distance from the Euphrates; it is the Carrhae of western writers. From Haran Abraham turns towards Canaan; but his brother's tribe remains in Haran. Hence, as the oldest writings of the Hebrews without any doubt derive the progenitors of the nation from Ur and Carrhae in the land of the Euphrates, so later authorities maintain, as an absolute certainty, that "the fathers dwelt beyond the river," i. e. the Euphrates. In the "second law" Abraham is called a "wandering Aramæan," and Ezekiel calls Chaldæa "the birthplace of the Hebrews."[582] The name "Hebrews" confirms this statement and view. Heber means "that which is beyond," "those who dwell beyond." The Hebrews call themselves the sons of Israel; the name of Hebrews they received from the Canaanites, into whose land they forced a way, though the Canaanites, no doubt, meant no more by the name than that the sons of Israel dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, before they set foot in Canaan.
But the genealogy of the Hebrews goes far beyond Carrhæ and Ur. After enumerating the ten patriarchs from Adam, i. e. from the man "formed of earth" (adama) to Noah, and giving the age of these patriarchs in hundreds of years (the highest age is 969, and the lowest is the seventh, 365), the first text enumerates another set of ten patriarchs from the sons of Noah down to Abraham, and of these the age gradually dwindles from 600 to 175 years.[583] The head of this series, Shem, the eldest son of Noah, the friend of God, is the immediate progenitor of the Hebrews. That the recollection and feeling of the relationship with the inhabitants of the land of the two streams, and with the population of Aram, i. e. of the upper land between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Euphrates and the Jordan, and with portions of the inhabitants of Arabia and Asia Minor, was alive and present in the minds of the Hebrews, is clear from the fact that these nations, akin in tribe and blood and language, were carried back to Shem. From Arphaxad, the third son of Shem, sprang the fathers of the Hebrews; the two first sons Elam and Asshur, we already know as the progenitors of the Elamites and Assyrians. From Lud and Aram, the fourth and fifth sons of Shem, the Lydians and Aramæeans were derived, a genealogy which certainly belongs to the Ephraimitic, if not to the Judæan text. In Arphaxad, the name of the third son, we cannot mistake the name of a district any more than in the names of the other sons. Arphaxad is a mountain canton of South Armenia, between the lakes of Van and Urumiah,—the Arrapachitis[584] of the Greeks, the Alpak of the Armenians, the modern Albak—and lies more than 6,000 feet high, at the source of the Great Zab, which also flows through it.[585] The son of Arphaxad is Salah, i. e. "leaving," "departure," and the son of Salah is Eber, in whom we have the later name of the Israelites, transformed into a patriarch. To Eber two sons are allotted. The name of the elder, Peleg, means division, "because in his time the earth was divided." From this we may draw the conclusion that the division of the descendants of Noah and the separation of the nations was transferred to the fifth generation after him. But another meaning may also be given on linguistic grounds to the name Peleg (Phaleg), and at the juncture of the Chaboras and the Euphrates we find a place of the name of Phalga.[586] Joktan, the second son of Eber, we know already as the father of those Arabian tribes who dwell from Mesha to Dshafar, and in Kachtan we have already found his name in Arab tradition ([p. 326]). The descendants of Peleg, the elder son of Eber, are Reu, and Serug the son of Reu. The name Serug appears to have been retained in the district of Serug, and the modern Serudsh, south-west of Edessa, in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. Western writers speak of the district of Osrhoene, and give this name to the south-west of Mesopotamia.[587] Serug's son is Nahor, i. e. "the river," the Euphrates. Nahor is followed by Terah, who had his home at Ur.
If this series of the first text preserved a genuine historical recollection, a portion of a Semitic tribe, settled in the mountains of South Armenia, or even the whole tribe—the sons of Arphaxad—journeyed to the south, after leaving nothing but their name in the mountain valley. The separation from their kindred was signified by the name Salah, i. e. "leaving." At first the sons of Arphaxad pastured their flocks at Serudsh, in the north-west of Mesopotamia, and from thence they passed to Ur on the lower Euphrates, while another branch, the sons of Joktan, turned away from the mouth of the Euphrates in the direction of Arabia. At a later time the sons of Arphaxad settled at Ur must again have marched up the Euphrates to Carrhae. Then followed a second division; one portion, the Nahorites, i. e. the people of the river, remained at Carrhae, while others, the Abrahamites, wandered to Canaan, or rather into the deserts bordering on Canaan. Moreover, since the first text denotes Abraham's eldest son Ishmael, as the progenitor of the Ishmaelites, i. e. of a considerable number of tribes of North and Central Arabia, and since the revision derives the Midianites, who wandered on the peninsula of Sinai, and further in the East, and other Arabian tribes, from the sons of Keturah, the younger sons of Abraham (pp. [324], [393]), it follows that on the borders of Canaan a portion of the Abrahamites must again have broken off, and passed on to the peninsula of Arabia.
However this may be, the kinship of the Hebrews with the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Aramæans, the derivation of their tribe from the river-land of the Euphrates and Tigris, is beyond a doubt, and we must regard the districts of Arphaxad and Serug, of Ur and Carrhæ, as the original home of the tribe, which afterwards grew up to be the Hebrews. In any case it is clear from this genealogical table that the Hebrews considered themselves closely allied to the Nahorites of Haran, but more especially to a considerable number of the Arabian tribes, or Ishmaelites, i. e. the Nebajoths, the Kedarites, the Temanites, the Jeturites, and finally the Midianites. This is proved, not only by the derivation of the Ishmaelites from the eldest son of Abraham, but also by the close relationship in which the Edomites, the brothers of the Hebrews, are represented as standing to the Ishmaelites. The names Ishmael and Israel are similarly formed; the first means "God (El) hears," the second, "God strives," or "God rules."
Within this circle of kindred nations, the Hebrews occupy the foremost place. The Ishmaelites are descended, it is true, from the eldest son of Abraham; but not from a legitimate or equal marriage; the mother of their tribe is a maid-servant and an Egyptian. Ishmael's wife also came from Egypt, and, in this there may linger a dim recollection of the ancient supremacy of the Hyksos in Egypt.[588] The Midianites, on the other hand, spring from a younger branch than the Hebrews; and they too are not born from the true wife of Abraham, and hence are not his genuine heirs. To the Moabites also, who pastured their flocks to the east of the Dead Sea, and the Ammonites, whose land lay to the north-east of this sea, the Hebrews held themselves akin. These tribes are the descendants of Lot, Abraham's brother's son; and therefore they, like the Hebrews themselves, spring from those who had moved from Carrhae to the West. But Lot had separated from Abraham, and chosen the region of Jordan. And when Jehovah rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, because the sins of their inhabitants were grievous, and overthrew these cities, and the whole land around them, Lot with his two daughters escaped towards the East; but because all the men of Sodom were destroyed, there was no man to dwell with Lot's daughters. Then they gave their father wine to drink, and lay with him, and the elder bore Moab, and the younger Ammon. Thus although the Moabites and Ammonites are closely allied to the Hebrews, and are of the pure stock—they were begotten in incest. A dark stain rests on their origin. Obviously the bitter hostility which afterwards prevailed between the Hebrews, and the Moabites and Ammonites, and the severe wounds which the Hebrews suffered from the attacks of these nations, have had their influence in forming and moulding the story of their origin. The Judæan text narrated quite simply the separation of Abraham and Lot, the choice of the land of Jordan, the destruction of the cities, and Lot's escape.[589] The broader details and motives given in the narrative are the work of the prophetic revision, to which the account of the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites exclusively belongs.
To the Hebrews, the wanderings and fortunes of their forefathers appeared compressed into the lives of the patriarchs, whose mighty forms are also to them the patterns of morality, piety, and a life pleasing to God, the expression of the genuine national character. The name Abraham means, in the form ab-ram, "high father;" in the form ab-raham, "father of the multitude." Sarah means "princess." Their right to the possessions, which they won in Canaan by the sword, they saw in the command given to their ancestors to go thither, and in the promise that the land should belong to his seed, which is given to Abraham, even in the first text. Moreover, the purchase which Abraham concluded with the Hittites of Hebron of a burying-place for his wife and himself in the cave of Machpelah—this narrative is a part of the Judæan text—and the services rendered by Abraham to Canaan gave to his descendants a claim to the possession of Canaan. Abraham planted the trees at Beersheba, and dug wells; he defended Canaan against Kedor-Laomer, and recovered from the kings of the east the booty taken, without keeping back any for himself. These services of the progenitor also constituted a claim for his descendants.
The accounts in Genesis[590] of campaigns of Elamite rulers towards the west, and the supremacy of a king of Elam, one of the Kudurids, over Syria, are founded on events and circumstances which occurred about the year 2000 B.C., as has been already pointed out in detail ([p. 251]). The connection into which Abraham is brought with them is the work of the Hebrews, and belongs to the Ephraimitic text.[591] The account which puts the Horites, who occupied Mount Seir before the Edomites, among the nations conquered by the Elamites, and beside these certain extinct and mythical tribes—the Rephaites, Susites, and Emites—shows plainly that the events must belong to a very distant past.
When the rights of the Hebrews to Canaan had been proved, when at the same time it was ascertained that the kindred tribes of Moab and Ammon could establish no claim to the land, after the voluntary renunciation of their progenitor, it remained to be shown that the ancient inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites themselves, had been from the first destined to give way to the Hebrews. We found that the Canaanites, like the Hebrews, belonged to the great family of the Semitic nations; but they were distinguished from them in character, in dialect, and religious conceptions. Hence they were not derived from Shem, but from Noah's second son, Ham; and they were also burdened with the curse of Noah—a trait which the prophetic reviser has added to the narrative.[592] After the flood, Noah planted a vineyard, and he became drunken, and uncovered himself in his tent; and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, but Shem and Japhet went backwards and covered him. And when Noah heard what Ham had done, he said, "Cursed be Ham; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren."
Abraham passed through the length and breadth of Canaan, the land which his descendants were destined to possess. At Shechem and Hebron, and then in the south, at Kadesh (Barnea) and Shur, he abode longest; at Hebron, and between Bethel and Ai, he built an altar to Jehovah. The presence of the patriarchs consecrated the places where his descendants were to dwell; among the Hittites and the Canaanites Abraham remained true to the God who had led him into Canaan; he rendered a willing obedience even to the harshest command. At the places where Abraham had set up altars, and where he had offered sacrifice, we find at a later period centres of Hebrew worship: by Abraham's sacrifices they were already consecrated. The Judæan text places the abode of Abraham mainly in the south of Canaan, at Hebron; the south belonged mainly to the tribe of Judah, and Hebron was David's royal abode till he conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The Ephraimitic text placed Abraham mainly at Shechem, the chief city of the tribe of Ephraim, and gives especial prominence to the sacred place at Bethel. The wandering of Abraham from the south of Canaan to Egypt, where the Pharaoh, warned by plagues from Jehovah, sends him away with valuable presents and in peace, is the work of the reviser. It is an anticipation of the later sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt, and forms at the same time a contrast to the widely different circumstances of their exodus.
After long waiting, the true son is at length born to the patriarch from his wife, of the blood of his fathers in Haran.[593] In order to preserve the blood of the Hebrews pure, a wife is not taken from Canaan for this son, Isaac, but the care of the father provides a wife from among his kindred, the tribe of the Nahorites, on the Euphrates. The first text tells us quite briefly, "Isaac was forty years old when he took to wife Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramæan of Mesopotamia, the sister of Laban the Aramæan."[594] The lively description of the journey and the suit of Eliezer is the work of the reviser of the two original texts. After thus providing for the continuance of the pure stock, when the oldest son, the child of Hagar, and the younger sons, the children of Keturah, had been sent away with presents, as the law of the Hebrews afterwards ordained for the sons of concubines, and directed to the East, when he had given everything into the hand of Isaac, Abraham died full of years and blessings.